Diminutive and rustic,
sly in gnomish size,
unblinking, unassuming
giant in disguise.
More thanks to photographer S.W. Berg,
and to unseen people
who do good things.
Category Archives: Books
August 10.20: Coping
“The malignant air of calumny has taken possession of all ranks and societies of people in this place…The rich, the poor, the high professor and the prophane, seem all to be infected with this grievous disorder, so that the love of our neighbor seems to be quite banished, the love of self and opinions so far prevails….The enemies of our present struggle…are grown even scurrilous to individuals, and treat all characters who differ from them with the most opprobrious language.”
According to David McCullough’s book “John Adams,” Christopher Marshall wrote the above in 1776.
Perhaps spellings have changed, and maybe vocabularies have weakened a bit, and maybe also “social media” is no longer the handwritten letter, but otherwise Mr. Marshall would not be much surprised, it would seem, by any of the news accounts today. So I pass it along to you, dear reader, for what it’s worth, and I leave it to you whether to laugh or to cry.
June 26.20: Coping
Well, dear reader, here it is again: writer’s block/slump/wasteland — call it what you will. I’ve been a big blank for over a week now. Yesterday I spent hours on a thought, trying to transfer it to words. I think I wore out the delete key.
What a mystery writing is. Not that I’m telling you anything you don’t know. Why do the words come and why do they not come? Where do they go, for heaven’s sakes?
I’ve not caught a glimpse of my muse, except perhaps in a particularly muscular buzzard, a.k.a. turkey vulture, hauling roadkill into the woods. Usually she’s a hawk, but she could have morphed. Right now I’d happily call her a buzzard. Now there’s a word. Don’t you love words that mean something just by the way they sound? Have you ever seen the book “Sound and Sense” by Laurence Perrine? My tattered, moldy copy dates back to my college days in the 60s. It says it’s about poetry but I don’t think so; it’s about the way the sound of a word makes it the perfect choice. Meaning isn’t the whole of it. The word must sound with the meaning. That’s prose, too. Just ask Sam Clemens.
I hope you are well, dear reader, and can still cling to sanity.
July 28.19
A tidy pile of four
arranged in order of size
morphs into a Babel
right before my eyes.
How do such things happen?
Is it among books’ habits
to grow all willy-nilly
and reproduce like rabbits?
Connections: November 12.17
My bedroom. Eat your heart out, Martha Stewart.
And do I hear “been there, done that,” dear reader?
What I want to reflect on, though, isn’t the chaos. It’s the book on the bed. Throughout all this mayhem, I’ve spent a few minutes every night with this book. Fittingly, I finished it on Veterans’ Day.
The book is “Tail-End Charley,” by James E. Brown, who kept a journal during his time as an Army Air Corps pilot. A kid who grew up quickly in the skies over World War II. To me it was fascinating, not just for the story in it but for the story about it.
Jim Brown wrote a book based on his journal, but it wasn’t published. Fast forward to 2017. His son, Gary, a writer also, took that manuscript and made it happen. He and his wife, my writing mate Tamara, and their daughter, a graphic artist, did it. They self-published and this handsome paperback is the result.
It is very personal, not just because it is first-person, but because it is brought to the world by his family.
I never met Jim Brown, but, boy, do I feel as though I know him! Underneath his descriptions of planes and places flows his understated narrative about himself, subtle and steady. In my opinion, his understatement is consistent with his generation and when he allows us a glimpse into his own feelings its rarity makes for eloquence.
I recommend this book, not because I know and like Jim’s family (I do), and not because I love reading about war (I don’t), but because of the down-home skinny kid who reveals himself in it.
Connections: June 27.17
The library was a bike ride away
back in the day
bumping up
oof
and down
ow
the curbs
back in the day
my kingdom for a basket!
handlebars and books
precarious one-girl circus
back in the day
a tiny place, that library
in a big summer
and the books whispered
take me for a ride on your bike
to that cushy old blanketed couch
in your cool damp basement
and don’t forget
what this was like
back in the day.
Thanks again to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
And thanks also to the Poquoson Library, Virginia, and all libraries!
Connections: April 21
Tuck this in your docket
a poem for your pocket
a sonnet for your vest
or line of anapest
today in bits of paper
in literary caper
we raise a silent cry
against the plain and dry
and summon muses hence
with their accoutrements
metaphor and simile
rhythm light and nimble-y
poetry’s declaration
of determined preservation.
Happy Poem-In-Your-Pocket Day, dear reader!
Connections: March 23
If this be barn
I think to myself
the cows are milked
by gnome and elf.
Can such an otherworld
storybook mime
really exist
in this place and time?
If I tiptoe around
not touchin’, just lookin’
would someone say Kommen Sie
for warm apfelkuchen?
Would Goethe move over
the Grimm Brothers share?
Could I touch a past
so reverenced there?
More thanks to the S.W. Berg Photo Archives.
Connections: February 5
The wing
is the thing —
humanity’s crux.
Yearning to fly,
we invented books.
The book sculpture above is part of a place named (wrongly, I hope) The Last Bookstore.
It is in downtown Los Angeles.
